


Already Knew

by Sundial_at_Night



Series: Another Name [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Explanations, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loki (Marvel) is a Good Bro, No Slash, No Smut, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Science, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Two Shot, attempted science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24200584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sundial_at_Night/pseuds/Sundial_at_Night
Summary: After the time-heist, it’s time for Tony and Steve to reveal what they learned in 2012 to the other Avengers. The reactions are not what they were expecting.Or: Steve and Tony found out Loki was innocent in the attack in New York and now they have to tell their teammates.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Clint Barton & Steve Rogers, Clint Barton & Thor, Steve Rogers & Thor
Series: Another Name [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739896
Comments: 8
Kudos: 278





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! In this part, we get a little more angst-y as the other Avengers learn about what happened in 2012. This can be read as a stand alone, but it would make much more sense with the previous work. Apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes. Enjoy! :)

Steve had handed the Sceptre to Tony as soon as he landed on the platform. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with it and, by the looks of it, neither had Clint, who had dropped to his knees. At least, that’s what he had thought until Bruce slammed a fist into the floor, and the archer choked out, “Nat’s gone.” With two words, everything fell apart. The room had burst into exclamations, questions, and a whole host of denials. Clint had tried to answer, but nothing he said made much sense other than, “Nat’s gone.”

Nebula and the raccoon, Rocket, left the room and left them to grief alone, though nobody would have objected if they wanted to stay. Natasha was the one that kept them together, including Rocket and the cyborg, who had stayed in touch even in the far reaches of outer space. As far as Steve knew, they weren’t _friends,_ but they had worked together in the past and that had to count for something.

They had left the Stones under the watchful eye of Rhodey, Rocket, and Nebula, who had disappeared rather than stick to the raccoon, and sat by the docks, all thinking about how much more this would cost them. It was so sunny and bright and _perfect_ outside, but it really shouldn’t have been. Natasha was _gone_. Bruce was mad, but Clint, even more so. All he had left was Natasha. 

Thor was convinced that there was a way to get her back and the rest of them were not so sure. Steve knew everyone was way out of their depth when it came to outer space magic, but it lined up with what Nebula had told them about Vormir. Thanos went there with Gamora and left with the Soul Stone. Clint went there with Natasha and left with the Soul Stone. 

“A soul for a soul,” Clint had said. “Natasha for the Stone.”

Thor knew the Stones, and he knew supernatural space magic, but Steve knew his teammate, and he knew that Clint wouldn’t have returned if he wasn’t certain that there was no way to bring her back. So, the god had suggested they use the Stones to bring her back and Clint yelled, “That’s at least what the red floating guy had to say. Maybe you wanna go talk to him, _okay? Go grab your hammer, and you go fly and talk to him!”_ Clint knew his hammer had been destroyed; it was pointed.

_“It should have been me;”_ Clint had said, and nobody found the courage in them to agree or disagree, but they all knew that they had to make it worth it. Natasha had died for this mission, and they had to make it count. They _had to._ She was the one that kept going and kept trying to help, even after they had already lost. Without hesitation, she signed up for this, ready to give anything to get them back.

Thor didn’t argue anymore after that, he just said he wanted to be alone and went inside for a while. Nobody had any qualms with going inside or leaving their teammate alone, so they did. Bruce and Tony went to the lab to figure out how to remove the Stones from their casings. Clint seemed to disappear, but Steve was confident he could find him on the roof of the building; the archer would often go up there back when they all lived together at the Compound years ago.

_See you in a minute._

_Nat’s gone._

_Did she have any family?_

_Yeah,_ us.

He was crying, but this was not the time to mourn. Not yet. Every second they spent in grief was another that something could go wrong before they could bring everyone back. Tony was convinced that something would go wrong. “When you mess with time, it tends to mess back,” he said. 

The billionaire was in the lab with Bruce, trying to figure out how to remove the Stones from the things that held them. Apparently, that was no easy task when you had to “convert _liquid energy_ into _solid energy”._ Tony had groaned and mumbled something about how the Aether followed exactly _zero_ laws of physics and disappeared into the lab, closing the door behind him. Steve saw through his half-hearted complaints to the absolute misery underneath. That’s what Tony _did_ ; bury grief under humour and sarcasm. But it was still there. 

_Clint, where’s Nat?_

_Nat’s gone. She jumped so I wouldn’t have to._

_What?_

_I’m sorry. I couldn’t—I couldn’t hold on. I’m so sorry._

_Clint, what are you talking about?_

Steve shook himself from his thoughts as he sat at the wooden table in the living room of the Compound, once again exceedingly disappointed that alcohol had no effect on him. It wasn’t just disappointment anymore, it was anger—anger that everyone else got to numb their feelings with a mere liquid, but not him. _Not him._ It was the last can of beer in the fridge. Steve didn’t recognize the brand, but he hadn’t really cared when he took it.

Thor sauntered into the kitchen then, footsteps heavy, and headed straight for the fridge, bending down to sift through it, likely for a drink. Steve had taken the last one and it would do nothing for him. It probably wouldn’t do much for Thor either, but he still felt the slight tinge of guilt.

The team had made fun of him in the beginning, joking about how New Asgard didn’t have a gym, or how he looked like “melted ice cream”, according to Rocket. That is until Bruce took them out of the room and gave them all a well-deserved scolding, especially Tony, who “should really be more understanding”. They all shut up after that.

Bruce’s words had hit _hard,_ and the worst part was that there was nothing they could do to deny what their teammate was saying. They had been the worst friends imaginable. If they could even call themselves that. Steve had been so caught up in the Avengers’ in-fighting, that he didn’t even notice how much his friend was falling. _Nobody_ noticed. Nobody but Natasha.

Then, after Thanos, everyone was just too _busy._ Thor had been at Tony’s wedding, looking a little worse for wear, but they all looked that way. The shadow of failure hung over everyone, and they hadn’t thought anything of it. Bruce had been using some of the data he got in space to try to merge himself and the Hulk. Tony was getting married and Pepper was pregnant. Everyone was more than happy that he could maybe start a relatively normal life. He deserved that. Clint had disappeared along with his family, but Natasha had received something that told her he was _alive,_ so she was looking.

Steve… Steve had no excuse for not being there for his friend. The others were busy, keeping tabs around the world and across the universe, but Steve was out of a job and, being a fugitive (kind of), he wasn’t sure he was welcome with the other Avengers anymore. So, he left, found an apartment in New York—Brooklyn—and tried to help others move on, knowing that he was doing a poor job of that himself.

They had fought each other in the airport in Germany over the Accords, which were undoubtedly important, but Thor had to fight _another_ crazy sibling after his _father_ died, lost an eye and his hammer, blew up his _planet_ to defeat her, then lost half of his people including his brother and his best friend, then lost half of his people _again_. So yeah, they should not have been surprised when Thor showed up without his usual cheer, casual attitude, and god-like build, but it _was_. Because they were terrible friends and had not noticed or done _anything_ about it.

At the very least, Steve could share some good news. Steve _hoped_ that it was good news anyway. He wasn’t sure if Thor would be happy to know that his brother was innocent for New York or even more devastated that he hadn’t noticed back in 2012 or after. Still, despite the risk of a bad reaction, he had to tell him now before “time messed back”.

“Thor,” he said, voice still dangerously raw. “I need to talk to you.” Steve leaned forward, elbows on the table and fingers clasped in front of him. This was not going to be a pleasant conversation. The can sat in front of him, empty. He didn’t like the taste and alcohol didn’t do anything for him, so what was the point of taking it in the first place? He already knew this.

“Can it wait?” Thor asked, rummaging through the contents of the refrigerator and Steve heard things being pushed around. He was wearing a hoodie and a sweater and fingerless cloth gloves. His hair had regrown from what it was the last time Steve had seen him at Tony’s wedding years ago. If that was not evidence of how absent he had been… 

“Probably,” he said, pushing guilt aside. He didn’t know about Thor’s struggles, but ignorance could not absolve him of all wrongdoing. He ran his thumb over the unfamiliar label; the can was smooth and cold against his skin. “But I thought you would have wanted to hear this as early as possible.” Steve slid the empty can down the table out of the way.

Thor swore in a language that Steve didn’t know, but he recognized the word as something Thor had said before, and stood up, closing the fridge door roughly. It shook with a loud thud. “Shoot. There’s no beer left.” Thor sighed deeply and trudged over to the table to take a seat across from Steve. “What is it?”

Steve said calmly, mildly, “It’s about your brother,” and waited for a reaction. When Thor returned from Asgard and told them about Loki’s death, Clint had been more than relieved and was not averse to showing it. They hadn’t talked much, if at all, for a week after that. Then Thor came back with an axe, short hair, one eye, and told them a censored version of events, which Bruce had only recently revealed the details of. He said Thanos attacked their ship and that Loki was dead, and he was quite sure that it was real this time (apparently, he had faked his death twice already so Thor couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure). This time, nobody felt anything but sympathy for what their teammate had lost.

Thor’s face spasmed and after blinking a few times, he swallowed, hard. “What about him?” he finally asked as he leaned back in the chair.

“When we were in New York, we messed up,” Steve started to explain. “Messed up” was a fairly large euphemism for what happened. Steve had interacted with— _fought_ —his past self. Tony and Scott’s plan had not worked entirely as expected either. According to Tony, they either created a divergent timeline or what happened in their changed New York was what had always happened, and they only remembered differently because they had been the ones to cause it. Tony wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” said Thor, eyes flickering around the room. “You already said you managed to get the Tesseract back.” He gave him a look that asked, _what-aren’t-you-telling-me?_

“Right,” Steve confirmed. That much of the story was true, but they left out several important details. Clint had said, “Nat’s gone,” and everything descended into chaos. They gave their mission reports with everyone else, but left out most of it, only saying that they managed to get the Tesseract and the Sceptre with a slight hiccup in the plan’s execution. “Well, we didn’t tell the full story because honestly… after Nat… I’m just worried Clint wouldn’t be able to take it,” Steve admitted with a light sigh.

After New York, he remembered how the SHIELD agent couldn’t sleep for weeks and after that, only for a few hours for months. He _hated_ Loki with a burning passion and would most likely _not_ want to hear that he was as innocent as Clint was in the invasion. The last few years had not been kind to all of them, but to Clint and Thor especially. Unfortunately, one or maybe both really needed to know the truth.

“Captain…” Thor trailed off; eyes locked on Steve. He supposed it was more like _an eye_ now rather than _eyes,_ but the bionic one looked rather realistic. It was a different colour and didn’t keep pace with his normal eye, but it did not appear to be too out of place.

“What can’t I take?” Clint’s voice sounded from the doorway, startling Steve who whipped his head in the archer’s direction. He was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and posture stiff and threatening. His tattoos were showing on his left arm and he was wearing a black sleeveless shirt and leather pants.

“Clint,” said Steve, turning around in his chair to see him better. Or maybe it was to look him in the eye. He wasn’t sure.

“Steve,” Clint addressed flatly. “What is it? What can’t I hear about?” He was glaring, never a good sign.

Steve sighed and decided to start at the beginning. Clint probably hadn’t been listening when Steve told the team what happened in 2012 and Steve was not about to blame him for that. “When we were in New York, we lost the Tesseract in the lobby of Avengers Tower. Loki got it and used it to get away—”

_“What?”_ they exclaimed unanimously. Clint pushed off the doorframe and came over to the table, roughly pulling out a chair and placing his hands on the back of it. Thor’s eye (and bionic eye?) widened considerably and he launched to his feet, the chair falling over backwards and clattering against the ground.

Steve raised his hands in a calming gesture and waited until both Clint and Thor retook their seats. “Yeah, I know this sounds pretty bad, but it turned out all right,” he said to relax both them and himself. “We were trying to figure out how to get it back—” arguing, more like, “—and then Loki showed up out of nowhere and gave it to us.”

Clint’s expression was carefully blank, and Thor looked skeptical above anything else, eyebrows raised with a _“really?”_ look on his face.

“That does not sound like something my brother would do,” he scoffed and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. “It was clearly a trick of some sort.”

“Yeah, well, _he did,”_ Steve confirmed, trying to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. What they had learned changed everything, and he was more than willing to bet that Loki had never told Thor or anyone else about what had happened, but still. He couldn’t help but blame himself and all of them—their past selves—for not realizing what was going on. “And it clearly _wasn’t_ a trick because we _have the Tesseract.”_ Was that not obvious?

“And you are sure you _actually_ have the _Tesseract?”_ Thor asked, narrowing his eyes as his lips curled down into a frown. “It could be a glamour, an illusion—”

“It’s Tony’s tech. I’d trust it,” Steve answered and, as much as his friendship with Tony was… complicated, he trusted him enough to know that he wanted this mission to succeed. “He also knew some things that he shouldn’t have,” Steve added.

“Steve…” Thor said warily. “What is it you are hesitant to tell me?” He dropped his arms and leaned forward slightly.

“He called us out on the time-travel,” Steve answered cautiously. “He knew somehow. That shouldn’t have been possible.” Well, he _did_ overhear an entire conversation about how they were going to get the Tesseract from another time, so maybe.

_So, I was right. You are breaking the laws of time for something. I suppose you’re here for the Tesseract._

He knew or at least guessed before he had overheard the conversation. The guessing should not have been possible; they were _careful._ Tony had said that the only thing worse than knowing and ignoring the risks was not _knowing_ the risks in the first place. This was _time-travel;_ they had no _idea_ what they were doing. Would the timeline collapse if they changed too much? Would they create some sort of time-loop that trapped them in that hour forever? They did not _know._ They were _guessing._

Tony had been well disguised, and Loki would not have known Scott. Steve knew he didn’t look too different from his 2012 self; a side effect of the serum, he assumed. The point was that the guy had no way of knowing that they had come from the future. But he knew anyway.

“No,” Thor said with a slight shake of his head. “That is quite possible. My mother easily knew that I was not in the correct time because of her sorcery. I assume Loki knew the same way.”

“Sorcery,” Steve repeated, hating that he might sound dumb for just being surprised that it existed. He shouldn’t have been surprised at the mention of magic. He lived with _Wanda_ for a time. 

Thor nodded and elaborated, “It allows them to see more than what eyes can.”

Steve accepted the somewhat vague explanation and returned the nod. Continuing the tale, he went on, “He wanted to know if Thanos won. We told him, and he just gave it to us then told us to leave.”

“Why would he—” Thor started, but cut himself off with a full-body shudder. “I don’t understand.”

Steve inhaled sharply and replied, “Tony asked the same question and, from what we heard, it sounds like the Sceptre was influencing him too during the invasion.”

Thor choked while Clint looked entirely emotionless. Maybe all of this was just too much for one day. Maybe he should have waited until they were done with all of this to tell them. Thor didn’t look so good and Clint… Steve couldn’t read him, but he assumed that there was nothing good going on behind those eyes.

“Why—why didn’t he _say anything?”_ Thor asked, digging the heels of his palms into his forehead, elbows on the table. His voice trembled and Steve’s eyes widened at the sight of electricity sparking on his fingertips. It didn’t often happen that Thor would lose control and the building would experience a temporary power outage. Tony knew how to manage them with electric fields and something else that Steve didn’t quite understand. The science part was mostly lost on him, but he got that Tony could not build a big enough battery to hold all of Thor’s lightning. 

“Tony asked the same question,” Steve said slowly. “Loki didn’t answer. He knew, somehow, that he had already died in this timeline.” Steve suddenly regretted not asking about that again and pressing for an answer, but they were running out of time and Loki had been insistent that they return as quickly as possible. When they returned the Stones, he would ask.

Thor dropped his hands to reveal his left eye drowning in tears. “I’m a horrible brother,” he breathed, barely audible. “I—I didn’t notice and—even back on Asgard he—How did I not _see it?”_

“Hey,” Steve leaned across the table to rest a hand on Thor’s forearm. “We didn’t see anything wrong either. SHIELD told us that he was the bad guy, and we all didn’t question it.”

“Yes,” Thor agreed, sobbed. “But you didn’t _know_ him. I did. I should have—the things he said—” Thor brought his other hand, his left, up to pinch the bridge of his nose and letting the half incoherent thought stop there. “He—he accused me of throwing him into the abyss. That—that is not true. He let go. He _let go.”_

Steve was not sure what Thor was talking about anymore. On the Helicarrier, the Avengers heard the briefest description of events: Thor was banished to Earth, Asgard was at war with another planet, a rogue robot showed up to the town in New Mexico looking for Thor since he was the Crown Prince of Asgard. Then there was a fight on a bridge of some sort, Loki tried to do something that Thor hadn’t explained at the time, Thor stopped him, and Loki fell into the Void and was presumed dead.

After Loki died (the second time, Steve thought if he remembered correctly), they had gotten a more detailed and truthful version of the events. Still, in both recounts, Steve could not remember Thor saying anything about “letting go”.

“If I was a better brother—”

“No,” Steve interrupted his train of thought firmly. “We all should have done something in the past. We’ve all made mistakes.” _Bucky._ “Loki said that he made some too and that failing the invasion of New York was how he was going to fix them. Tony inferred and told me that his “fixing it” probably included getting the Sceptre away from Thanos and maybe destroying the Chitauri.”

Thor just buried his face in his hands again and Steve watched Clint, looking for any indication that he might have been about to go on a rampage, but there was nothing except for that expressionless stare.

“Before we left,” Steve added quietly. “He asked us to make Thanos pay for what he’d done.” He sighed and let his head slump forward, then lifted it again. “I take it both of us are already sure we’re going to do that, but Tony’s convinced that something is going to go wrong and that we need to be prepared. I thought I should tell you in case…” he let that sentence go unfinished. _In case we don’t make it._

Thor stiffened and managed, “Thank you for telling me.” His eyes were red and puffy, and he looked like he really needed that drink. “I can’t imagine that he would just _tell_ you all of this,” Thor added after a minute.

Steve replied, “Tony noticed something about his eyes, how they were green and not blue and well… put two and two together.” He looked at Clint, whose blank expression had morphed into one of something Steve couldn’t recognize. “Clint?” he asked.

“I already knew,” said the archer, earning a perplexed look from Thor. “Or I had guessed,” he corrected. “I thought—I thought Asgard knew. I thought—” he gave a small puff of air. “—I don’t remember a lot of it, being under his control, but I remember being afraid.” Clint shuddered and exhaled a shaky breath. “That’s what stuck with me. I think the Sceptre was doing that—connecting us with more than just loyalty. 

“I remember being afraid of losing, but more afraid of _winning._ It didn’t make sense at the time, but…” he trailed off and his eyes drifted to the ground as he crossed his arms. “I saw a picture of the Mad Titan— _Thanos_ —after the snap and I just _knew._ I just _knew_ and there was this unquestionable feeling of _fear_ even though I never saw him.” A tiny laugh. “I shouldn’t have known who he was, but I knew that _title_ and I knew that _name_ even when I had never heard _either_ and I knew I shouldn’t say the name out loud, _somehow._ Still. _Fear._ I didn’t know why, but I guess that’s it. There are still remnants of that in me, of… whatever it was. Magic or whatever.”

_“What,”_ Thor breathed. “And you didn’t decide to tell _any_ of us?” he asked harshly, and Clint recoiled.

“He went back to Asgard. I thought he would have told you or that you would've known. Don’t pin this on _me._ He was in prison, which I was fine with. Sure, now we know why he did it, but we didn’t _then._ I _still_ don’t remember most of what happened while the Sceptre was controlling me, but it was disgusting how he could _use_ me like that. As far as I was concerned, he could stay there,” Clint said, anger flooding into his voice. “Then you came back, and he was dead, so what was the _point,_ even if I did realize it then? _Huh?”_

“Clint,” Steve started but didn’t get any further.

Thor just looked on in shock, tears still dripping down his face.

“I couldn’t _remember._ I couldn’t fit any of the pieces together because half of them were _missing._ Most are _still_ missing,” the archer finished and relaxed with the last syllable.

“I need—” Thor stuttered. “I need a moment.” The big guy had sparks trailing down his arms and fingers, singeing the fabric of his gloves and sweater. The room got cold and Steve, smelling ozone, knew it was probably best to leave him alone for a while.

He nodded and motioned for Clint to join him, which he did, and they left the room. The Compound outside the communal room was mostly dusty. There weren’t any rodents or bugs; they weren’t stupid enough to leave food lying around, but the whole building smelled like dust and felt like solitude.

The bedrooms were mostly empty (except for Natasha’s, Steve’s and Rhodey’s) with the belongings of the Vanished packed into cardboard boxes and shoved into the corners of the rooms. Steve remembered having to pack them away with Natasha a month after and not knowing what to do with all the stuff. They had been sure, then, that they had no way to reverse Thanos’ damage. They were _gone_ and so were the Stones.

Then Scott Lang showed up and suddenly, they weren’t so sure anymore. Natasha had considered unpacking for everyone and had said that it would be a nice “welcome home” to find all their things where they left them. Steve was not sure he could go through her things instead.

The two found an empty room, a conference room that had been used a couple of times and wasn’t as dusty as everything else. Still, the air was by no means fresh. Steve sat at the head and Clint perched on the edge of the table.

“What are you thinking?” Steve finally asked after a moment of silence. The lights flickered and Steve pretended not to notice, looking at his friend instead.

The archer sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I hate him for doing what he did. It was wrong, but…”

Steve offered a look of understanding. Maybe he didn’t really understand, per se, but he could listen. People told him he was good at that. _Natasha_ told him he was good at that.

“We don’t have the whole picture,” Clint finished and dropped his hand to his lap. He released a loud sigh.

Steve nodded slowly and waited for his friend to continue.

“Loki was innocent, I think,” said Clint. “Maybe not entirely and maybe it’s all a trick, but I just keep thinking that I _shouldn’t_ have known that _name.”_ He gave a small huff. “Our first enemy turns out to not be the enemy and all I can think about is _that._ Feels stupid.”

“If it’s important to you, it isn’t stupid,” Steve said. “You really think he’s…” he trailed off, unsure of how he wanted to finish that sentence.

“I do. Like…” he trailed off and averted Steve’s gaze, staring instead at the door.

_Like Bucky._

_Bucky was innocent too. He didn’t do those things. He didn’t want to._

(Is that why this is so important to you?)

“I agree.” Steve nodded and dug the heel of his shoe into the carpet.

Clint swore suddenly and loudly, and Steve jumped at it. Half of him wanted to say, _language,_ for old time’s sake, but the other half could not care less. How he had changed. How what _mattered_ to him had changed. “I know he is,” he grumbled, then swore again. “How did we not _notice?_ I mean, even _Tasha…”_

Steve shook his head, pushing memories of 2012 away. “We didn’t know Loki before he came to Earth. He never told us anything, and we had no reason to suspect that there was anything else going on.”

The lights flickered again.

“He wasn’t healthy,” Clint added. “In 2012, I mean.” He took a deep breath and Steve thought he was calling upon memories he would rather not recall. “He nearly didn’t make it out of the compound alive. I don’t remember it well enough, but he was totally out of it, I’m pretty sure.”

Steve furrowed his brows in confusion and asked, “What do you mean?” 

_What are you saying without saying?_

Clint shrugged and then looked up very suddenly. He remembered something; Steve guessed. “He nearly fell over once or twice, was always dizzy, and didn’t sleep or eat. I think I remember Selvig trying to tell him to sleep, but I’m not sure about that.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asked. _There might be more to this than just mind control._

Clint nodded, bouncing his leg on the table. “Yeah. He was not healthy. We could ask Thor later but…”

The lights flickered again, and the window panes shook in answer to the question.

Clint shared a look with Steve, then asked, “How much of the room, do you think, is still going to be intact when we go back?”

“Very little,” Steve replied dryly.

He stood up when the lights flickered for the third or fourth time (he wasn’t counting) and went with Clint to the lab to check on the progress. Tony was hunched over a computer screen and Bruce was typing furiously on a keyboard that had been expanded for the Hulk’s larger fingers.

“It’s not us,” said Tony abruptly, shooting up to stare at Steve and Clint. “At least, we’re pretty sure it’s not us,” he corrected.

Steve shook his head, confused for a moment. The lights and the shaking. Tony thought Steve was here because of the lights. “We’re just checking in,” he assured, walking into the lab, and taking a seat on a leather stool. “That,” he said, pointing to the ceiling, “That’s Thor.”

Tony made an “Oh” shape with his mouth and turned back to what he was doing. “So you told him about…” He waved his hand around.

“Yeah,” Steve replied with a light sigh and brought a hand up to his forehead. He didn’t know if the others felt it, but those Stones made him very uncomfortable.

“How did he take it?” asked the billionaire, not looking up from the screen which displayed a holographic image of the gauntlet.

The lights flickered in response before Steve could answer, and Tony nodded wordlessly.

“So as expected,” he answered his own question with a slight grimace.

“How is it going here?” Steve asked, steering the topic in a different direction.

Tony frowned and replied, “Everyone’s in the gauntlet.”

“So, it’s done?” Clint asked, standing behind Steve with his arms crossed.

“We’re good to go,” Tony confirmed, motioning to the constructed gauntlet on the table to his left. “Let’s do this.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Tony discuss what happened in 2012 and on the Statesman five years ago, in which, we get a little more angsty. 
> 
> Also: My jumbled ideas for how the Avengers managed to get the Stones out of their casings/forms. 
> 
> AKA: it's more of an angry sludge sort of thing so, someone's gonna need to amend that.
> 
> Apologies for any grammar/spelling mistakes. Enjoy!

Bruce had not known what he was doing for the better part of the last week and still didn’t know what he was doing now. The Stones were solid _energy._ Energy should not be _matter_ , but they could clearly be picked up and touched, which defied most of the laws of physics that Bruce knew. The radiation was gamma, so at least he understood that. But beyond that simple fact, he was completely, utterly lost.

Back in 2012, he had been brought onto the Helicarrier to track the Tesseract, and yeah, he could track the thing and read its energy signature, but handling it was something else entirely. The cube was currently sitting in an isolated glass box. The other Stones were separated as well in similar containers. 

Tony was on the other side of the lab, asking Thor about how Thanos removed the Space Stone from the Tesseract. He had asked Bruce first, but being the Hulk, he hadn’t remembered much of what happened after being defeated by Thanos. So, the genius had gone to Thor next.

Thor’s entire posture was stiff as he answered, “He crushed it with his bare fist.” Then the Thunder god all but ran out of the room, looking more than a little distressed.

Tony’s eyes widened considerably. Then he muttered, “Well that won’t work,” before going back to examining the cube. Apparently, the Tesseract wasn’t actually made of glass, but crystal that had been enchanted or something to conduct the Stone’s power. So Tony was more than a little upset that, once again, magic was invading his life.

The Aether wasn’t much better. It was probably just as bad. If _solid energy_ wasn’t enough to deal with, they had to deal with converting to it from _liquid energy._ Bruce was so done. Seven PhDs and not one of them could prepare him for these blasted Stones that broke every law of physics. Though, he supposed the Aether being liquid and ever-changing made a warped sort of sense; it being the Reality Stone and all.

They had dug up footage of what happened in Korea when Ultron removed the Mind Stone from the Sceptre. The video was unclear, but Tony guessed that he had used a dynamic laser to break the gem.

The Power Stone was in the Orb, an object not dissimilar to the small spherical devices Rocket had built to contain the Stones during transportation. According to the raccoon, it was a sort of puzzle that one could twist open if you knew the right sequence. Nobody knew what that sequence was, but a quick scan of the Orb showed how to open it.

Those containers had easily held the Time and Soul Stones once they had been collected, so those were the two easy ones. The bald lady on top of Strange’s building had handed over the Time Stone without the necklace, so Bruce had been thankful that there was one less Stone to remove from a complicated contraption. Clint had said that he woke up surrounded by water with the Soul Stone in his hand. So, there was nothing for that either, which was good.

The archer had tried to look for Nat’s body; everyone believed that he had. Bruce knew his friend would have left Vormir without Natasha if he wasn’t completely sure that there was no way to bring her back. All the same, when he came back without her, Bruce could do nothing but look on in shock, asking, “Clint, where’s Nat?” as his friend dropped to his knees with a look that answered his question.

_Nat’s gone._

There were questions, and the team had to explain how their missions went. Most went off without a hitch. They had Power, Time, Reality, Mind, Space, and Time. Steve had mentioned a “hiccup” in their plans to get the Tesseract and the Sceptre, but Bruce couldn’t focus on that.

_Nat’s gone._

_She jumped so that I wouldn’t have to._

Bruce shook the thoughts from his head and adjusted his glasses. Now was not the time to be thinking about it. They would do what Steve said. They would make it worth it and would try to bring her back with everyone else, but Bruce had his doubts that would work.

_Nat’s gone._

_She jumped so that I wouldn’t have to._

_What?_

Not _now._ There was too much work to do. Bruce trudged over to where Tony was examining the Sceptre’s gem. FRIDAY was running a full scan on the weapon, recording its energy signature, heat, radiation, and etcetera. “Do we have a dynamic laser?” he asked him, glancing at the readings on one of the screens nearby. The Mind Stone emitted a _ton_ of gamma radiation in comparison to the others. They all gave off some but Mind more than most.

Bruce watched as nanites ran over Tony’s arm and formed a gauntlet around his hand. The repulsor lights over the palms glowed softly blue against the polished red metal. “Right here,” he answered as he pointed a finger at the gem. A thin red laser shot out from one of his fingertips; with a sharp _crack,_ the blue gem broke in seconds to reveal the glowing yellow Mind Stone inside.

Bruce nodded silently. It was unnerving to see the Mind Stone without something containing it. The Sceptre was familiar; he’d had it in 2012 on the Helicarrier and in Avengers Tower before Ultron. After that, in Vision. But it always had something to hold it. Now, nothing, which was disconcerting, though needlessly. All the Stones were passive. “The Aether’s going to be difficult,” he noted directly, flippantly gesturing to his left with his hand to where the sludge was contained by Rocket’s glass tube.

The raccoon had some experience with designing gadgets that were capable of holding Infinity Stones. He told them that several years ago, he had designed spheres capable of carrying the Power Stone, so the team had trusted him with building those devices for this mission. The Aether’s had to be different, however, because it was liquid, unlike the others. 

“I know,” Tony sighed, putting the Stone into the isolated system in the back wall of the lab. It was a reinforced hole in the wall with steel and bulletproof glass, insulated by an energy field based on the Arc Reactor. That last part had been a gamble. Tony had a suspicion that the Arc Reactor had shorted out the Sceptre in 2012 in his tower, so they went with that and were more than happy that it worked on the other Stones as well. They still gave off radiation and other signatures, but for the most part, their influence was limited to the containment chamber. So at least the Sceptre wouldn’t be agitating anybody.

Tony strode over to where the Aether was, eyes flickering between the entity and its energy readings displayed nearby. “Any ideas with this one?” he asked, making a few sweeping movements with his hands in front of the information. 

Bruce considered it for a moment. “Thor said it possessed Jane, so we should be careful with it.” Not that they weren’t careful with the others, but they should be more so with this one. He shrugged and sat down on one of the benches nearby. Being the Hulk all the time, he could not always rely on furniture to support his weight. The scientist stared at the red sloshing liquid inside the cylinder. “I’ve got nothing,” he admitted with a sigh. “We studied the Mind Stone before Ultron, but I still have no idea what they really _are.”_

Tony hummed and the nanites around his hand receded into the housing unit in his chest. It glowed like his Arc Reactor once did, but Bruce knew what it was. Still, he had a hard time imagining Tony without the device.

Partially out of curiosity and partially to fill the silence, Bruce asked, “What was your little “hiccup” in New York?”

The genius stopped in his tracks; his eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he said nervously, “Oh yeah, that.”

Okay, suspicions confirmed—this was more than just a “hiccup”. “Tony—” Bruce sighed, drawing out the last syllable. “What did you do?”

Tony released a raspberry; Bruce’s concern only grew. “So, in the lobby of the tower, when we planned to get the Tesseract, we ran into a bit of a problem.” He corrected quickly, “More like, the problem ran into us.”

“What happened,” Bruce pressed flatly, standing up, crossing his arms, and shooting Tony a _this-better-be-good_ look.

Tony put his hands in front of him, palms forward, and rapidly replied, “Before I continue, it all worked out, everything’s fine. We got the Tesseract—”

“Tony,” he chided, stepping forwards.

“I was walking away with the briefcase when the Hulk came crashing out of the staircase. So, if anything, this is actually your fault.” Tony pointed a finger at him.

_“My_ fault? _Seriously?”_ Bruce had always considered himself and the Hulk to be two separate consciousnesses. When one was in control, the other had a fuzzy sense of what was going on but had little say in what happened. Sakaar was different. _Now_ it was different. But back in 2012, Bruce let out the Hulk, then… nothing but green.

“Okay, well only a little,” Tony placated. “But still. It _would_ have worked. Anyway, I dropped it after being hit by the Hulk and, somehow, it ended up in Loki’s hands, and he got away.”

Bruce facepalmed, then dragged his hand over his jaw. Great. Just _great._ They either created an alternate timeline or changed the past beyond repair. Beyond that, how was Steve going to return the Stones after all of this? He groaned, then realized aloud suddenly, “I can’t help but notice that we still have the Tesseract.”

“Right, well here’s the thing,” Tony pointed at the ceiling with his right hand. “Reindeer games—god, I still need a better nickname—showed up less than an hour later as we were figuring out a game plan and handed it over.” Tony looked through one of the holographic displays at Bruce with a familiar _what-do-you-make-of-that_ expression.

Bruce narrowed his eyebrows. He made _a lot_ of that. Still, he had his doubts. From what he remembered of Thanos’ attack on the _Statesman_ (which was admittedly little due to being the Hulk for a portion of it) _,_ Loki had stolen the Tesseract from the Vault on Asgard. The cube was his bargaining chip and what he could use to magic himself out of any tricky situation if the need arose. Bruce could not imagine Loki—especially 2012-Loki— _handing it over_ without a fight. “He just gave it up?” Bruce asked incredulously, narrowing his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Tony confirmed, eyes refocusing on the hologram. “Big plot twist: he wasn’t himself during New York and was working for slash being controlled by Thanos.”

“Oh,” Bruce said, feeling more than a little foolish that a simple, “Oh,” was all he had to say to that. He had assumed Loki was somehow coerced into leading the invasion in 2012 (due to a nearly fatal injury that he had to deal with), but that the Sceptre was influencing him as well didn’t occur until Tony mentioned it. “Did he tell you that?”

“Not exactly,” Tony said with a slight shrug. “I don’t think he would have willingly. His eyes were green, not blue. You said Thanos sent him to Earth. We put two and two together and asked. Which, yeah, I was right.” Tony stared at him intently for a moment before his previously neutral expression morphed into confusion. “You don’t seem all that surprised,” he remarked nonchalantly.

“I kind of guessed,” Bruce admitted, giving a slight wince. “Or at least, I’m not surprised.” He pressed his lips together and tried to find something to look at other than Tony’s slumping posture.

“Seriously?” asked the billionaire, raising both eyebrows in a skeptical look.

Bruce nodded once; his frown deepened.

“And you didn’t say anything because… _why?”_ Tony asked, tone raising. Before Bruce got a chance to answer, he continued his questioning, “And _how_ do you know that in the first place?”

Bruce sighed deeply, and replied, “We spent a few weeks together on the _Statesman.”_ The three weeks aboard Thor’s refugee ship were… not _fun,_ but they were educational. There was so much he could learn in space, especially with all the sensors on the ship, some of which scanned for energies that Earth’s science hadn’t even discovered yet. It was cool. And that was all besides spending long periods of time in the company of Asgardians, who were more than a little curious about Earth’s customs. It was honestly entertaining telling them about different movies and pop culture.

Tony raised one eyebrow and lowered the other. “The _Statesman?”_ he asked.

“Thor’s ship,” Bruce explained, a little surprised that Tony didn’t remember. Then again, Bruce might have never mentioned the ship’s name, only referring to it by “the refugee ship”. So maybe his lack of knowledge was forgivable. At Tony’s continued perplexed look, he clarified, “The one that Thanos attacked to get the Tesseract.”

“Right,” Tony drawled. “So how did you know? Did he say anything to you during your little space vacation?”

“It wasn’t a _vacation,”_ he corrected. They travelled for three weeks before their journey had been interrupted by Thanos. Those three weeks were _by no means_ a vacation. There was always work to do, especially for Bruce, who strove to make himself useful in the healing wing. The engines were constantly overheating and turning the ship into a gigantic sauna or furnace—depending on how you thought about it. As was previously said, it was not _fun._

“Fine, fine,” Tony said calmly, but Bruce could see the tension in his shoulders. “Space is scary, I get it. But did he?”

Bruce exhaled loudly. “No, he didn’t _say_ anything to me, and I don’t think he would have. Loki wasn’t… a _pleasant_ person to be around, but he wasn’t _murderous._ That’s what gave it away first or at least hinted at it. I mean, it would probably have been the _easiest_ situation to usurp the throne and murder Thor or something. But he _didn’t._ Didn’t run off or do anything all too suspicious. And yeah, the eyes kind of gave it away too.” The eyes were almost an afterthought for Bruce. He had never been up close with Loki during New York except for when he was the Hulk, who obviously was not the most reliable when it came to the finer details, so he didn’t notice the colour shift until later.

“Does Thor know?” Tony asked suddenly, attention once again being diverted away from the task at hand.

Bruce thought about it, but… no, he didn’t think so. He had put the pieces together himself after the aforementioned nearly fatal injury, but he hadn’t said anything to Thor because Loki asked him not to. Days later, Thanos boarded the ship with the Black Order and a hoard of Outriders. There had been no _time._ Citizens were rushed to the escape pods and there were just bigger priorities than what had happened five years ago. “Don’t think so,” he said. “Should we…” _Should we tell him?_

“Steve said he would,” Tony seemed to read his mind, and replied before he could finish the question.

Bruce nodded, “Okay.”

Tony stared off, gazing at the edge of the table, but he wasn’t really _looking_ at it. Bruce knew _that_ look. That was the look that said Tony had an idea; Bruce was not about to interrupt him.

He clapped once loudly. “I’ve got it,” Tony declared with a slight gleam in his eyes. “We compress the Aether into the correct size and freeze it.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes but didn’t object. Tony meant to freeze the Aether. It _was_ liquid, but liquid _energy_ probably behaved differently than liquid _matter._

“The Aether. It’s a liquid, right?” Tony said, following Bruce’s train of thought. “That’s what they do to become solid: they freeze.”

Bruce sighed and adjusted his glasses. “Well, we might as well try it. And if we level the Compound, I’m blaming you.”

Tony smirked. “Sounds good. I’ll do the same.”

“It was your idea!” Bruce objected, though there was nothing but amusement in his voice.

Another devilish smirk from the genius. “And there’s nobody here who will be able to confirm that.”

Bruce chuckled softly before preparing the compressor. It was a relatively simple machine that probably was never intended to be used on Infinity Stones, but it worked. The Aether was now a relatively small, ingot shaped liquid cased in a small shell of nanites. The freezing idea, to Bruce’s eternal surprise, worked, and after thirty minutes of dropping the temperature to damn near absolute zero, they had a solid Reality Stone and not Reality Sludge.

“So, if you knew, why didn’t you tell anyone?” Tony asked, probably to make conversation as he worked. Bruce knew he was like that; it helped him focus. When there weren’t people around, he talked to FRIDAY or his bots, or sometimes just to himself to fill the silence.

“He asked me not to,” Bruce explained carefully. He stood behind one of the monitors and pulled up the data on the Tesseract. “I had thought about it for a while—how he was so different from in New York—but it wasn’t until something happened that everything fell into place.”

A long silence as Tony rearranged the equations and Bruce watched him.

“Are you going to keep being vague or are you going to tell me what “something” is?” Tony prompted, head down and thoroughly absorbed in the equations for the Orb that contained the Power Stone. It was a puzzle that had to be solved before it could be opened, so Tony worked on that between ideas to remove the other Stones from their containment devices and splices of conversation. Whoever said multitasking was impossible had never met Tony Stark, the master of juggling numerous tasks at the same time.

“We had to make a stop to resupply and get more fuel,” he replied. “There was something wrong with that planet, I’m not exactly sure what it was, but there were beings that could feed off of magic.”

Tony looked up from the screen and shot Bruce an annoyed look before returning to it. Yeah, Bruce didn’t like magic any more than Tony did, but it _did_ exist and there was little they could do to disprove that. If anything, his time on the _Statesman_ had more than confirmed that magic wasn’t just some science that they didn’t understand yet. He had seen Asgardians replenish their water supply from _nothing._ So yeah, magic.

“We had to get off that planet quickly, and in our escape, Loki got stabbed,” Bruce continued, pushing all thoughts of magic from his mind.

“I would have thought he would be doing the stabbing,” Tony quipped. Thor used to always tell stories about how Loki had stabbed him in the past; even Bruce had to admit that some of the stabbings were pretty creative. All the same, it turned into a bit of a running joke within the Avengers that Thor was always getting stabbed, which was only reinforced when he _did_ get stabbed (only in the leg) on one of their missions. Bruce couldn’t remember when, but Clint was so busy laughing that he nearly got stabbed himself.

Smiling at the comment and the memory—that he really shouldn’t have been thinking of fondly as his teammate got _stabbed_ —Bruce corrected, “He only really ever threatened to stab. He didn’t go through with it as far as I know. But I’m pretty sure he and Val tried to kill each other a few times.”

“Val?” asked Tony, glancing up for less than half a second.

“The Valkyrie.”

Tony shrugged. “No idea.”

“Never mind,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “Someone we met on the alien trash planet. Anyway, he passed out, and I had to do a field patch. Thor was on the ship and she was with him. And… it wasn’t pretty, Tony.” Even though he was dead (probably) and Thor was nowhere nearby, Bruce still felt a slight pang of guilt in remembering what he had promised—what he had _sworn._

“What are you saying?” Tony pressed, though Bruce could tell that the billionaire already had his suspicions. The billionaire pulled up a diagram of the Orb and sifted through its components.

Reluctantly, Bruce answered, “The scars.” Bruce didn’t miss the way Tony froze at the admission. “I said—he practically swore me to secrecy. Said Thor would go on a “murderous rampage to avenge him” and that Asgard couldn’t deal with that right now.”

“And you just agreed?” he challenged dryly, skeptically.

Bruce shot him a glare. “It was _that,_ or he would abandon me on that planet and tell the others I had _died._ So yeah, I did. Thanos showed up a few days later, so it didn’t really matter anyway. I planned to tell Thor, but after—after everything... And then we just didn’t see each other.”

“Jesus,” Tony muttered with a dark expression. “This just keeps getting better and better,” he said humorlessly.

“Yeah,” Bruce audibly breathed in agreement. 

“This is so…”

_Messed up?_

“Yeah.”

Tony didn’t say anything for a minute and Bruce didn’t attempt to continue the conversation. He kept his eyes focused on the readings from the Stones. Power was giving off a _ton_ of heat. Reality, Soul, and Time all emitted energy similar to what Tony’s tech picked up around Thor and other Asgardians: magic. Mind gave off gamma radiation, which Bruce knew from previously studying the Stone. Space was quite different. All the Stones radiated at least _some_ heat, but not the Tesseract. If anything, the air around the cube seemed to be dropping in temperature.

“The energy coming off the Tesseract is different from the rest,” Bruce reported. “The others give off plenty of heat, especially Power, but not the Tesseract.”

“Makes sense,” said Tony flatly. “Space is cold.” He shuddered.

“What if we melt it?” Bruce suggested. “That glass—or crystal, whatever—is cold. What if it’s the Stone that’s keeping it solid?”

Tony’s face spasmed. “What?”

“What if that isn’t glass or a crystal? What if it’s—” Bruce racked his brain for the right word, eyes flickering between the floor and the cube “—a type of ice?”

“You’re saying that the Stone is surrounded by solid ice, that the Tesseract is just the Stone surrounded by water?” Tony challenged flatly.

So maybe “ice” wasn’t the correct word. “Not exactly,” Bruce amended. “Not necessarily frozen _water._ Maybe the crystal could be melted? I mean, it’s obviously way below room temperature and there’s nothing to stop it from melting except for the Stone, which is not giving off any heat at all.”

“You want to melt the Tesseract,” Tony confirmed. “Is that safe?”

Bruce shrugged. “Maybe. Only one way to find out.”

“We’ll do that one last then,” Tony conceded after a moment’s thought. “I don’t want to implode the building.” Yeah, the last time people messed with the Tesseract, it didn’t end well for anyone inside the building or in a multiple-kilometre radius.

The billionaire went back to the computer, briefly telling Bruce that he was going to find the raccoon, so he could decode the Orb, which was hooked up to a contraption capable of opening it once they got the sequence right. Now it was just the work of opening it, which only Rocket had seen done. Extremely carefully, each of the freed Stones were moved to the containment chamber built into the wall; a simple cavity reinforced with steel that had a viewing window of bullet-proof reinforced glass. The gauntlet, which had been designed before they began the time-heist, constructed itself from nanites on an examination table in the corner.

In less than an hour, the gauntlet was completed, the Orb’s puzzle decoded, and the Tesseract in a furnace. To both Bruce’s and Tony’s surprise, the melting idea worked, and they were left with the Space Stone, which coated a thin sheet of ice on anything it touched until it was put in the gauntlet with the others. The gauntlet accepted the Stones and shimmered as the nanites integrated them with the metal.

“Boom!” Rocket yelled when they were all in place. Both Tony and Bruce jumped back before shooting the raccoon a death glare. Rocket chuckled at their reactions but quieted as Tony whirled on him.

The lights flickered and all three ran to the computers to check on the energy signature, only to find that it was completely stable. They were emitting more gamma radiation together, but they were fine. That should not have been causing any electrical disturbances.

“Whatever it is,” said Bruce, glancing between the quiet Stones in the gauntlet and the blinking lights, “it’s not the Stones.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, squinting at the screen skeptically. “Unless they’re messing with the data too.”

Bruce shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he whispered harshly. “They weren’t doing that before.”

“They weren’t in the _gauntlet_ before,” Rocket added with a look that said, _well-duh._

The lights sputtered again; one in the corner sparked, but there was no change in the data coming in. There was a low buzzing noise coming from the ceiling.

“I don’t think it’s the Stones,” Bruce said.

Tony nodded silently. He didn’t look up from the screen in front of him.

Tony asked FRIDAY about the building’s integrity, which was completely intact; only the electrical system was being fried. Bruce shared a look with the genius, and both silently shared a guess at the cause of the sudden electrical disturbances.

A minute and several more electrical flashes later, Steve walked into the room followed closely by Clint. Had Steve told him as well?

“It’s not us,” said Tony abruptly, standing up quickly. “At least, we’re pretty sure it’s not us,” he corrected. 

Steve shook his head. “We’re just checking in,” he assured, walking further into the lab, and taking a seat on a leather stool. “That,” he said, pointing to the ceiling, “That’s Thor.”

Tony made an “Oh” shape with his mouth and turned back to the gauntlet blueprints. “So, you told him about…” He waved his hand around.

“Yeah,” Steve replied with a light sigh, and brought a hand up to his forehead.

“How did he take it?” asked the billionaire, not looking up from the screen which displayed a holographic image of the gauntlet.

The lights flickered in response before Steve could answer; Tony nodded wordlessly.

“So as expected,” he answered for himself.

“How is it going here?” Steve asked.

Tony frowned and replied, “Everyone’s in the gauntlet.”

“So, it’s done?” Clint asked, standing behind Steve with his arms crossed and an unreadable expression.

“We’re good to go,” Tony confirmed, motioning to the constructed gauntlet on the table to his left. “Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The next part goes up Friday!
> 
> All comments/kudos are appreciated :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! The next chapter goes up Friday. 
> 
> Side Note: This is only my second work on AO3 and I’m still pretty new here. So if anyone has any tips about formatting or tagging or anything else, I would really appreciate the help :)


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